LAUSR

The explanatory essays in The James Lind Library were written to promote wider understanding of why fair tests of treatments are needed, and what they have come to consist of. The informed health choices essays complement the explanatory essays by focusing on the use of information from fair tests of treatments to inform decisions. The world is awash in health information, including an abundance of false or inaccurate information – misinformation. Believing and acting on misinformation can result in wasted resources and harm. Not believing and acting on reliable information can also result in waste, harm and unnecessary suffering. Assessing the reliability or trustworthiness of information about treatments requires understanding and application of key concepts – general principles that are ‘applicable in a great variety of different instances in spite of their difference’, and can ‘serve as points of reference by which to get our bearings when we are plunged into the strange and unknown’. The informed health choices essays present three sets of concepts that can help people to assess claims about the effects of treatments and to make informed health choices: